The Countess (2009)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Disappointment for a huge fan!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Blistering performances.

Wonderful costumes and great sceneries. The plot - acceptable. The acting - poor and dull. All actors have the same tone in all situations, the same mimic, no gestures. They're like robots. No body language, no voice inflections at all. Like a drawled song. In the second half I managed to get used to those dialogues, but at the beginning they sound quite ridiculous. And fake. Not one natural reaction or conversation in the entire movie. Maybe this is because of the way people were back then - very calculated and calm. But there are several ways of being calculated and I think the characters chose the wrong one.

I did not regard "The countess" as a historical or a horror movie. I rather saw it as a portrait of a woman. I think the movie wants to show the very destructive effect falling in love can have when a person is very insecure and does not have the ability to reflect its own behavior. In some way that connects to "2 days in Paris" which also dealt with the difficulties of love. The movie also had a feminist side to me: on the one hand it deals with the obsession of beauty (a kind of female issue, also an issue that matters especially to actresses). The countess crosses ethic limits to gain or keep beauty and youth - maybe an analogy to plastic surgery. The murderers committed by the countess are also compared to war: is it better to kill for power than for beauty? A political view is that the countess is not mainly sued because she has committed crimes but because her power is so huge that many people are happy to get rid of her (which is how politic still sometimes works nowadays). Regarding these facets the countess is a parable to human behavior today. It does not want to be a historical movie. I still can see that especially Hungarians are annoyed when they see (and hear)non-Hungarian actors in this movie speaking English (even though the actors are not English) and saying Hungarian names in a non-Hungarian way. As i said before it is not a historical movie and the setting should just be regarded as a frame. I also remember reading an interview with Julie Delpy quite some years ago where she complains about not getting any roles in the US because her accent is "too french". I think mixing actors from different countries she wants to show (or find out) that (or if) a movie can work even though there is an international cast. Regarding the countess as a parable i think that can work. But as my boyfriend does not like watching movies in English we watched the dubbed German version and i really don't know if the accents would have bothered me... Anyways i can see the movie does not really fit a genre so i understand people have troubles with it. I prefer not to think in genres and categories too much - if you do so too I think you will be able to enjoy this movie.

this is very well made, true to the history, geography and atmosphere of the place where the story takes place. also very well played, esp by Julie Delpy who already is known for her convincing but modest acting. Costumes and art decoration were superior. The story was told well too, considering it's telling a rather controversial story and that the main character is an anti-hero.Still it's very successful in reflecting the controversies in history telling and discussions about historians, heroes and storytellers by saying they're the real devil. Watch it definitely and compare it to other historic movies, you'll sense the difference...

from an anglo-centric and a male-centric point of view, this movie sucks, of course...from any other point of view, The Countess is a very well orchestrated piece of story-telling.a dark portrait of a dark age. a tale of love and madness. but did our emotions evolved so much as our techniques?as it starts: "history is the tale told by the victors. who are the victors? barbaric warriors, mad kings and greedy traitors. mainly most of our history is made of fables fabricated by those glorious victors."as till today, history is male's victory... here you got a female's tale... see for yourself. i can only tell: i dove into it